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in: Comics, Astonishing Spider-Man Vol 1, Week 34, 1998,
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Astonishing Spider-Man Vol 1 37

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Quote1 I'll have you out of my life -- even if you have to go in a body bag! Quote2
—Doctor Octopus (Carolyn Trainer)

Appearing in "A Show of Force"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Spectacular Spider-Man #232

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Synopsis for "A Show of Force"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Spectacular Spider-Man #232

Cyberspace is still recovering from a virus that was unleashed upon it and has been slowly rebuilding itself. Along with the data recovery, the consciousness of Seward Trainer is also reformed. Having had enough of living in a virtual environment, Trainer decides to finally return to his body.[Continuity 1] At that same moment, doctors are busy disconnecting Seward's connection to the machines per the instructions of his daughter, Carolyn Trainer.

Meanwhile, Ben Reilly is lounging around his apartment when he gets a surprise visit from Peter Parker and his wife Mary Jane.[Continuity 2] Peter explains that they have returned to New York City at the rest of J. Jonah Jameson, who believes that Peter is the only person to photograph evidence of Spider-Man with the skeleton the wall-crawler stole from the city morgue.[Continuity 3] Peter is also finding out whose skeleton was found. After engaging in some more small talk, Ben pulls the skeleton out of his closet to show the Parkers.[Continuity 4] The Parkers are shocked to learn that Spider-Man's theft of the skeleton is true. However, Ben points out the implications this skeleton brings: it was found in the smokestack where Peter Parker attempted to dispose of Ben Reilly's body five years earlier. Since they learned that Ben was the real Spider-Man and Peter Parker was a clone, it leaves them wondering who this skeleton belongs to.[Continuity 5] Their discussion abruptly ends when someone comes knocking at Ben's apartment door. Reilly quickly realizes that he forgot that he has a date with Jessica Carradine and they all begin scrambling to cover the scene up. While the skeleton is easily stashed in Ben's closet, Peter and Mary Jane being there -- and the possibility of Jessica noticing that they are identical -- is a bigger problem. When Ben suggests that Peter take Mary Jane and crawl out the window to the roof, Peter reveals that he doesn't have his powers anymore.[Continuity 6] Mary Jane comes up with a solution: they'll just tell Jessica that Peter and Ben are cousins and the reason why they look so alike is that their fathers were twins. With no other ideas, they go with Mary Jane's idea which works well when Ben introduces Jessica to his "cousin" Peter and his wife Mary Jane. As they make small talk, Mary Jane notices that one of the bones from the skeleton fell out of the body bag and is on the floor. Quick thinking, Reilly kicks the bone under his couch while Peter creates a distraction.

After Peter takes Jessica out of the living room, Ben and Mary Jane scramble to recover the bone and hide it someplace. That's when the virtual image of Seward Trainer appears on Ben's television screen. He warns Ben that his daughter has disconnected him from the life support monitors at the hospital, preventing his mind from returning to his body. That's when Peter enters the room with Jessica again, leading to another scramble to make up excuses. With Trainer pretending to be a weather report, Mary Jane and Ben "remind" Peter that they need to see their "uncle" Seward Trainer in the hospital. With this excuse, Ben has a means of getting out of his date in order to help Seward. With Jessica out the door, Ben quickly changes into Spider-Man costume and turns down Peter's offer of help, reminding Parker that he doesn't have his spider-powers anymore. The wall-crawler arrives at the hospital just in time to stop Carolyn Trainer from signing the final paperwork that will have Seward's body turned over to her care. With her cover blown, Carolyn doffs her street clothes to become Doctor Octopus.[Continuity 7]

In order to ensure the safety of all the people inside the hospital, Spider-Man knocks Doctor Octopus outside. While the wall-crawler is distracted, Carolyn's minions try to flee with Seward's body. Outside, Spider-Man continues to battle with Doctor Octopus, he gets fed up of her selfish ambitions. He ultimately defeats Doctor Octopus by tricking her into ramming her mechanical arms through the passenger windows of a car. Grabbing the arms on the opposite side of the vehicle, he then yanks violently smashing the Doctor's head against the car, knocking her out. With police arriving on the scene, Spider-Man quickly catches up with Seward's captors and saves him. Hooked back into his machines, Seward is able to transfer his mind back into his body and is grateful to Ben for saving his life. After promising to come back and check on Seward later, Spider-Man changes back into Ben Reilly and pays a visit to Jessica Carradine's apartment to make up for canceling their date earlier. He arrives just as she is completing the development of her latest photos. When he enters her darkroom, Ben is shocked to discover that it is plastered with photos of Spider-Man.

This story continues in Sensational Spider-Man #3...

Appearing in "Headlines"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Sensational Spider-Man #3

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Synopsis for "Headlines"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Sensational Spider-Man #3

Now

Arriving at Ravencroft Institute, Spider-Man is spotted by some police officers that try to arrest him. The wall-crawler has to deal with them until John Jameson, the head of security, orders them to stand down and for the wall-crawler to come inside before he trips the automated defense systems. However, it is too late, forcing the web-slinger to leap to safety. That's when Peter Parker pulls up in a car and tells the web-spinner to hop in and they escape. Ben is snippy with Peter for a moment as he is having a bad day, but then asks how Peter knew he would be at Ravencroft.[Continuity 8] Peter points out that he picked up some investigation skills during his time at the Daily Bugle, but also he heard reports of Spider-Man being sighted on his police scanner. Peter then asks Ben what else is going on that is bothering him. He tells Peter about how he has been dating a woman named Jessica Carradine recently. He shows Peter a photograph of Jessica that he found recently. It is of the woman when she was celebrating her seventh birthday. There is something about her father, whose face is obscured in shadows in the photo, that disturbs him. He also recently learned that Jessica is obsessed with Spider-Man, but not in a positive way. In fact, she has a hatred for the wall-crawler and Ben has no idea why. He then recounts what he saw earlier...

Then

... Jessica has brought Ben Reilly to her apartment for the first time and it took all of his efforts not to act too shocked when he saw that it was covered wall-to-wall with photos of Spider-Man. Ben points out that this looks a little extreme, suggesting that this may be an obsession she has. Jessica then reminds him that she is a photography student and that she has taken to photographing the wall-crawler so she can learn how to refine her photography skills. After some coaxing, Jessica gets upset that Ben would question her, as she has had a long history of people not believing her. She explains that growing up her mother died and her father was in and out of jail which caused her to be bounced around a number of foster homes. Her father, she explains, was later imprisoned for a crime that he insists he did not commit, that he was accused of robbing and murdering an old man. She then tells Ben that her father was murdered a few years later. Before she can provide any more details she catches the headline of the Daily Bugle that accuses Spider-Man of murder in light of his recent theft of a skeleton from the city morgue. This proves her believe that Spider-Man is evil. Ben tries to convince her not to jump to conclusions, but it does little to dissuade her opinion.[Continuity 9] Still, she insists that if her father was still alive he could prove that Spider-Man as evil, but before she can explain further the phone rings.

The call is from Peter Parker who suggests that they learn the truth about the mystery skeleton by having it thoroughly examined, Ben agrees and they make a plan to meet later. When Peter got off the phone and fills in his wife Mary Jane about his plans.[Continuity 10] While the last tests were done by Ben Reilly's friend Seward Trainer, Peter wants to run some tests with some real professionals this time around and get a conclusive answers not only to confirm who is the clone and who is the real Peter Parker, but to also learn the identity of the mystery skeleton.[Continuity 11]

By the time that Ben was off the phone, Jessica was in no mood to talk so he stopped by the Daily Grind to drop off his time card before meeting with Peter. The coffee shop is busy, and when Shirley Washington asks Reilly if he could help, he has to turn it down. That's when her son Devon, tells Ben that Jessica left her backpack the last time she was in. As Ben stores it in his locker to return when he sees her next the childhood photo of Jessica slipped out. Looking at the photo for the first time he immediately felt something disturbing about Jessica's father. This just adds another mystery to a stack of them. Changing into Spider-Man, Ben web-slinging across the city thinking about the Jackal and his clones and how they turned his life upside down, and how this skeleton throws so much into question.[Continuity 12] On his way to meet with Peter, Spider-Man's spider-sense began going off warning him of danger. Swinging down to a nearby alley, he finds a man who was recently attacked. The man explains that he wasn't mugged, but attacked by a creature that matches the description of Carnage.

Fearing that Carnage may have escaped from Ravencroft Institute, the wall-crawler decided that this was a more pressing concern and web-slinged all the way out to Ravencroft to check on things. There he met with John Jameson, who shows the web-slinger that Cletus Kasady remains confined to his cell and that there is no evidence that he had broken out. That's when something triggered the outer security alarm prompting Spider-Man to go outside to look, which led to his confrontation with the police before Peter came to pick him up...

Now

... As Ben finishes his story they arrive at the Avengers' temporary headquarters on Long Island.[Continuity 13] There they meet with Giant-Man who agrees to examine the mystery skeleton for them. As Giant-Man runs a series of tests on the skeleton against a DNA sample provided by Spider-Man, Peter Parker notices that Giant Man has a photo-enhancer and decides to run Jessica Carradine's photo through it so they can get a better look at her father. By this point, Giant-Man has run all the results through both the Avengers and Fantastic Four's databases and conclude that the skeleton is an exact match for Spider-Man's body. With the final tests underway, Peter finishes enhancing the photo and instantly recognizes the man in the photo. He quickly shows it to Spider-Man who recognizes him as well. Jessica's father is the burglar who murdered his Uncle Ben years ago.[Continuity 14] That's when Giant-Man concludes his testing and informs Spider-Man and Peter Parker that the DNA test concludes that the remains belong to a clone of Spider-Man.

This story continues in Amazing Spider-Man #410...

Appearing in "Strangers"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Spider-Man: The Lost Years #1

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  • Truck
  • Ambulance
  • Bike

Synopsis for "Strangers"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Spider-Man: The Lost Years #1

It is 10 pm in the evening just outside of Salt Lake City as traffic pushes along the highway in a heavy rain. Suddenly, a truck driver suffers a heart attack causing him to jackknife his vehicle. However, before oncoming vehicles can slam into the truck, a man leaps out and pushes the truck over the shoulder and down the side of a cliff. Retrieving the driver before the truck crashes, the mystery man then gives the trucker CPR. By the time the authorities arrive on the scene, the trucker is loaded into an ambulance. Asking eyewitnesses, the police learn that the mystery hero left just as soon as he appeared, not sticking around to be congratulated for saving a life. Not far down the high way, this mystery man -- Ben Reilly -- continues down the long road he has been on for the last three years. He felt compelled to save the man due to the spider-sense that rang in his head, despite the fact that he believed that becoming Ben Reilly stipped him of all the past responsibilities that shackled Peter Parker to use his power for good.[Continuity 15]

Meanwhile, in the city, the imperfect Peter Parker clone known as Kaine has tracked Ben Reilly to Salt Lake City. Waiting for his prey to arrive, he sits by himself and nurses a bottle of vodka he purchased in a bar. His peace and quiet is interrupted by a prostitute who offers to show him a good time. However, when he ignores the woman, her pimp tries to start a fight with him. Without saying a word, Kaine quickly grabs the man by the head nad beats his head on the table until he is unconscious. Getting up, Kaine gives the prostitute some money, telling her not to spend it all in one place and begins walking out of the bar. On his way out, he is stopped by a blond haired woman named Louise Kennedy. Impressed by Kaine's show of strength, she asks for his name. Sizing the woman up, the clone tells her that he was never born and therefore never had a name, but she can call him Kaine. As he leaves, Louise is interrupted by Jimmy the Mouth, a local crook who wants to get down to business. Punching the portly criminal in the stomach, she tells him to keep his hands to himself.

The following morning, Louise is lost in thoughts about Kaine as her partner, causing her to lose her train of thought while talking to her partner Jacob Raven. Regaining her composure, she tells him how she has been playing Jimmy the Mouth, so he tells her where they can find the operations of Jimmy's uncle, a drug dealer named Vincent Tannen. Although Louise is certain they can bag Tannen and strike a huge blow to the drug trade in Utah. Raven isn't so optimistic about that given Vincent's influence in Salt Lake City. This upsets him, as he considered these sorts of things happen in other cities like New York or Chicago. Despite how disappointing this is, Jacob has faith that if he does the right thing, he can make a difference. When Lousie chides him for his Mormon upbringing, he shrugs it off, telling her that his motivation is a matter of faith. At that same moment, from his jail cell, Vincent Tannen is sitting pretty comfortably even though he is incarcerated. He is visited by one of the guards who gladly agrees to make arrangements to have someone brutally beaten. While at the local university, Ben Reilly manages to secure a job in the science department thanks to false credentials and a letter of recommendation from Seward Trainer. Although he doesn't feel right about using fraudulent information to get the job, he pushes this thought out of his head, reminding himself that he is qualified to do the work thanks to the implanted memories of Peter Parker that are in his mind. Going to a local diner for breakfast, Ben is instantly smitten by the redhaired waitress, a young woman named Janine Godbe.

While he is placing his order, Jacob Raven comes in to order the usual. Not knowing how Raven was at the time, Ben instantly liked the guy because the officer reminded him of his Uncle Ben. As Raven picks up his food to go, Reilly can't help but notice that Janine is unnerved by the officer's presence.[Continuity 16] Deciding he likes the woman, Ben tells her about how he is new in town and doesn't know anybody and clumsily asks if she would go out with him for dinner. At first, she says no, but when Reilly pays for his meal and heads out, she changes her mind, much to his delight. By this time, Louise Kennedy is working undercover, dropping money off to some drug dealers on behalf of Jimmy the Mouth. However, when she tries to arrest the man, she finds herself surrounded by gunmen. Before they can kill her, Kaine comes crashing in through one of the windows. For some reason, Kaine has been drawn to this woman, prompting him to come to her rescue. Catching the armed drug dealers by surprise, Kaine kills them all before the Lousie's astonished eyes. In the aftermath of the battle, Kennedy asks what they should do next, Kaine tells her that he has a few ideas.

Later that day, Louise's partner Jacob just misses the bus back home and curses himself for being so out of shape. Suddenly, a car pulls up next to him and some armed men forced him inside. While elsewhere, Ben Reilly crashes his motorcycle because his spider-sense goes off warning him of some serious danger. Unable to ignore it, Ben follows the signal to a nearby house that suddenly explodes into flame the moment he arrives. Despite his misgivings, Ben cannot avoid being the hero and leaps inside the burning building to look for survivors. He finds a woman and her child inside the house and quickly carries them outside and disappears before the authorities arrive. Later, at the home of Louise Kennedy, a romantic moment with Kaine is interrupted by a phone call. Louise is upset to hear that her partner has gone missing and his family narrowly avoided getting killed by a bomb that was planted in their home. Disturbed by this, Louise tells Kaine to hold her and never let go. Meanwhile, Ben Reilly listens in on the doctors at the hospital and learns that Raven's wife is going to be okay. No wanting to be the hero anymore, or be in costume, Ben Reilly decides to leave things for the police to handle, unaware that at that very moment the husband of the woman he saved is being held at gunpoint.

Appearing in "Intimacies"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Spider-Man: The Lost Years #2

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  • Green car

Synopsis for "Intimacies"

Reprint of the 1st story from
Spider-Man: The Lost Years #2

After spending so much time in New York City, Ben Reilly has taken a liking to Salt Lake City, coming to see it as a throwback to a simpler time. However, this opinion quickly changed on the night that drug dealers kidnapped Detective Jacob Raven and blew up his home with his family still in it. As the officer is being driven to his execution by a gang of thugs, they are stopped en route by Reilly, who has disguised his face by wrapping a cloth around his face. When they try to run Ben down, the one-time wall-crawler leaps over their car and forces them to crash. He quickly takes out the gang members. With Raven free, Ben tells the office that he has nothing to fear from him. That's when patrol cars begin arriving on the scene prompting Reilly to flee. Jacob had the urge to call out to Ben, find out who he is, but couldn't bring himself to talk. Among the officers arriving on the scene is Raven's partner Louise Kennedy. When Jacob asks how they were able to find him, she tells him it is unimportant right now and that he needs to get to the hospital right away because his wife and child were injured.

Not far away, Ben Reilly tries to rationalize why he got involved in saving Raven and discovers that abandoning the power and responsibility that he has been trying to cast aside. Elsewhere, Kaine is out in the rain as well, deciding to put aside his hunt for Ben Reilly. This is because of his whirlwind romance with Louise Kennedy, which has given him hope and new perspective even though his body continues to degrade and cause him great pain. While at the local prison, drug lord Vincent Tannon learns from one of the guards that the hit on Raven's family was pulled off. Unfortunately, they only succeeded in killing Jacob's wife, his son still lives. Furious over this failure, Vincent decides to deal with this in persona. Visiting his family in the hospital, Jacob Raven goes to his church to reflect on the murder of his wife. He feels as though Vincent Tannen made their son an orphan because he died on the inside the moment his wife was murdered. He's joined in his mourning by his partner Louise Kennedy. When she tries to put her hand on him in comfort, Raven leaves the church without saying a single word, leaving Louise alone in the hospital.

The following day, Ben Reilly begins the first day on the job as a teaching assistant at the local university. Professor White sits in on one of Reilly's lectures and is very impressed. He tells Ben that he is most impressed with his teaching ability and decides to keep him on as an assistant. After class, Ben walks among the commons, happy with how his new job is going. That's when he spots Janine Godbe among the students and rushes to her side. Janine is upset that Ben stood her up for dinner the night before, but Ben explains that he never got her phone number and wasn't able to reach her. They quickly make up and she agrees to go out for dinner with Ben that evening. As the pair spend the day together, they quickly find themselves falling in love with each other. That night, after dinner, Ben puts on his make-shift mask and goes out into the city. He then begins systematically attacking Vincent Tannen's various illicit drug operations. At that same moment, Kaine and Louise spend the evening on a nearby mountain looking down at the lights of Salt Lake City. The pair admits that they are developing feelings for one another. When she brushes aside Kaine's long hair, he reels back, but she tells him that she doesn't find him hideous, despite the strange scars on his face. She then takes the gloves off his hands so that she can hold them. That's when the pair admit that they are in love with one another.

That next day, Jacob Raven finds himself standing outside the university medical center. He knows that he should be by his son's bedside, but can't bring himself to go in. However, someone else has no such reservations as they enter Matthew's room and kidnaps the boy. It is night time again, and Ben and Janine have spent another romantic evening together. They kiss outside her apartment door, but she stops him from taking things further. She apologizes, telling him that she can't do this and this has to stop before going inside leaving Reilly to deal with the hurt of this rejection.[Continuity 17] With nothing else to do, Ben covers his face again and goes out into the night. At that same moment, Kaine and Louise are in the throws of passion when suddenly Kaine begins to scream. His body spasms painfully as his body degrades some more. Louise begs to know what's wrong, but Kaine merely leaps out the nearby window into the night. While at another warehouse, an illicit drug deal is going on under the supervision of Jimmy the Mouth, the nephew of Vincent Tannen.

As Ben beats up on the armed thugs, Jimmy tries to make a run for it with the money. Unfortunately, Kaine comes crashing through the door looking for Ben Reilly, looking to take his pain and anger out on his fellow clone. Kaine beats Ben within an inch of his life before fleeing the warehouse. Before he can recover from his beating, Ben is taken at gunpoint by Jimmy the Mouth who intends to execute the intruder. However, he is stopped by Louise Kennedy who intends to kill him on the behalf of Vincent Tannen, who apparently is out of prison and has Matthew Raven with him.[Continuity 18]

Notes

Continuity Notes[]

See Also

Links and References

References


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